Menu

Pre-Baby

I was going to skip this week’s photo challenge, ‘Community’, since I don’t really take a lot of photos of large groups of people, crowds, or things that strike me as representing the theme. Then I remembered that I had these photos.

These were taken at Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, which at an estimated 1,000 years old is the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America. Seems like a good fit for ‘community’.

As you can see, we went there in the Winter, seems as though no one thinks of going to New Mexico in the Winter. Those who do go, tend to go for the skiing, so a lot of the tourist spots are not very crowded. We were followed around by a dog for most of the time while we walked around the pueblo.

This is not a museum or a the typical tourist site with guides and a re-enactors. It’s a active community, with families living in these houses. There’s a sense of privacy throughout, though no one was anything less than welcoming. I think the residents asked us as many questions as we asked them.

To add to the feel of community, several homes were open, especially if the residents were working at some kind of craft, like ceramics, or beadwork. However, it didn’t quite feel right to start taking snap shots of people intently working at their art, so I don’t have any photos of the people who live here!

We went before Mr. C was born, and we’re going back soon, it’ll be interesting to see how he will react to New Mexico. Definitely very different than New Hampshire!

I usually come up with some photo related to our son, since “Stay At Home Dad” tends to be the subject of the blog, but I couldn’t find anything that fit well this time. So, here are photos from three very different places for this week’s photo challenge.

We love going to the Southwest states of the US; especially New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Here’s a shot of a large chunk of petrified wood from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The circular age rings of the petrified log look almost like colored glass in person.

It’s been a few years since we’ve been able to go there, but we also love Italy!

Renaissance architecture is filled with patterns, wether it is in the exterior columns or the interior mosaics. Here’s one of my favorite views of Florence, from the second floor of the Uffizi museum. Note how the pediments over the windows alternate from triangular to half circles. In the middle distance is the Pallazzo Vecchio, with its pattern of regular crenellations and support arches on the tower. And in the distance is the Duomo, with it’s famous dome showing its ingenious exterior ribs.

Maybe we’ll be able to go back in a few years once Mr. C is a little older!

How else to follow up the beauty of Florence but with the beauty of my own humble house! When I first looked at buying the house I dreaded the prospect of refinishing the kitchen floor. Some previous owner had the bright idea that it would be nice to paint the floor a very dark green. It took me a couple of years before I finally got around to getting the floors fixed, and it took a lot of work too, I was surprised to find beautiful maple wood under all that horrible green paint. It’s not a Florentine palazzo, but I like it anyway.

Turns out that I don’t have a lot of photos taken from above! I’m not sure if it’s because I just haven’t been looking down, or if I’m afraid of heights! So I had to go back to 2007 for this one, before the arrival of our son, so this seems like it was taken a lifetime ago. This was taken in Bandelier National Park in New Mexico sometime in December. It may not look like there is much of interest in this photo, but if you look closely in the center is the outline of an ancient pueblo. It looks a bit like a fan. (It might actually be a kiva, which is more of a ceremonial structure, I’m not 100% sure) A home for a group of Ancestral Pueblo People. A really fascinating area, I hope to go back later this year!